"We must remember and remind about Volhynia Massacre"

Observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre (fot. Pomorski Urząd Wojewódzki)Observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre (fot. Pomorski Urząd Wojewódzki)Observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre (fot. Pomorski Urząd Wojewódzki)Observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre (fot. Pomorski Urząd Wojewódzki)Observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre (fot. Pomorski Urząd Wojewódzki)

"Over 100,000 Polish nationals were slaughtered in Volhynia. As a people we must remember and always remind about it", President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday in Gdansk, northern Poland, at observations of the 74th anniversary of the 1942-43 Volhynia Massacre.

Official commemorations of the massacre's 74th anniversary took place Polandwide on July 11-12 under the heading Genocide Victims Remembrance Day. July 11 marks the massacre's culmination on June 11 1943, when Ukrainian death squads attacked Polish nationals gathered in churches for Sunday mass throughout the Volhynia district in what became known as the Volhynia Bloody Sunday.

Addressing the commemoration at Gdansk's memorial to the Volhynia victims, President Duda said he was happy to see Poland pay homage to them, and reminded that the massacre took over a hundred thousand lives. In this context he mentioned the Volhynia Bloody Sunday, and reminded that on that day Ukrainian nationalists attacked more than 150 Polish settlements.

Andrzej Duda stressed that the Volhynia observances were not aimed against Ukrainians, but were an integral part of building "good bilateral relations".

"July 11 is an important day, a day of national remembrance about citizens of the 2nd Republic who fell prey to an act of genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists. As a people, as a society, we must remember about them and always remind about them. Not in order to provoke animosity towards the Ukrainian people, by no means. On the contrary, we must keep this in mind as a warning and an element of building good relations between our people", Andrzej Duda said, adding that Polish-Ukrainian relations had to be founded on "honest remembrance and calling matters by name".